


Ringing in my Ears

by gingercinderella



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M, Soul Bond, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-04-18 18:22:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14219025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingercinderella/pseuds/gingercinderella
Summary: All you know about your soulmate is the songs they get stuck in their head, since you hear them too.





	1. Chapter 1

After the funeral, Lee’s soulmate has the same sad, slow song stuck in their head that played as Zak was lowered into the ground. The music has the echoey, far-off quality as ever, like he’s hearing it through a window.

The poor sap’s also at a funeral, he thinks. The song is standard, played at Fleet funerals across all twelve colonies. He could look into who else in the Fleet died recently, but he decides against it. Some people tempt fate, try to find a connection, but he has never felt like that is his path.

He knows his soulmate is in the Fleet. Or is close to someone who is-  though maybe that someone is dead now. He'd figured that part out years back, when his soulmate had joined up. Everyone in basic learned jodies, the cadences called out while marching, and his soulmate had the tunes stuck in their head for ages.

If they’re in the Fleet, he would meet them eventually. And if they lost someone in the Fleet, well. He’d see them around, sooner or later.

He gets a happier tune stuck in his head in response. Something to cheer up his other half, even if he feels nothing but a mix of grief too deep to name and rage, white-hot, that he has to feel this way at all. Stewing in his anger would be easy; to simply go over what he could say to his father over and over again is what he wants to do. It is harder to recall something cheerful, a tune Kara sometimes hummed when the three of them had all hung out together. But it gets him out of his own head for a little bit.

If it cheers up his soulmate somewhat, it would have been worth it. Not that he would have a way to know; the only response he can feel is what is stuck in their head, as per usual. The song he gets from his soulmate changes from the funeral dirge to the same tune he had sent across, so that had to mean something.

When he sees his father, he says the first things that come to his mind, which are the most hurtful things. He isn’t sure if they would have been different if he had spent time thinking up what to say or not, if he would have found a way to be more diplomatic or if he would have gone ahead and called his father a murderer regardless. The look the old man gives him, a mix of loss and agony, is just about what Lee feels himself.

The pair of them could grieve together. Maybe it would be good for both of them. They both just lost Zak, both loved him dearly.

Lee entertains the thought for the briefest of seconds before he turns on his heel, excusing himself.

His father calls after him, his voice breaking. Lee does not turn around.

Hours later, Kara buys the first round and he buys the second.

“Do you believe in fate?” She asks after the fifth round, maybe. He has lost track. He looks over at her curiously- she was religious, he knew that much, but there was a world of difference in fate and religion. She had called fate a child's game once or twice.

“Do you?”

She shrugs, her finger tracing round and round the edge of her glass. “Sometimes I wonder if the Lords play tricks on us, giving us soulmates like they do.”

“Was Zak yours?”

“I thought so.”

She tosses back her glass and then waves her hand to the bartender for another.

“My soulmate was at a Fleet funeral today, I think. They had the music stuck in their head,” he says. Have the pair of them ever talked about this before? Since she had been with Zak, it wasn’t the kind of thing he would bring up- if the pair of them weren’t matched, or if they hadn’t talked about it, Lee wasn’t going to bring it up for them.

“Mine’s having a good frakking day, by the sounds of it. On the worst damn day of my life.” She knocks back the next drink and stands, steadying herself before Lee can reach up to help her. “Take me home, will you?”

He stumbles along with her, neither of them sober enough to walk in a straight line, but they’re arm in arm for support. The streets are dark but these are their streets, their old haunts, it’s not scary. Especially when he’s got Kara, who could take just about anyone even blindingly drunk.

Kara sits on the large bed she had shared with Zak and points Lee to the kitchen, demanding water. He rushes for two cups, and hands it to her without sitting.

“Lee?” She asks, her voice soft and almost scared. She had sounded like that the first day, on the phone when she had called him to tell him. Almost like she's nearing tears.

“Yeah, Kara?”

“Don’t blame your dad for all of it. There were a thousand choices that led to this.”

Lee is almost impressed with how coherent she is, but it still makes his press his lips together, draw a deep breath. He can’t get into this with Kara, not when they’re both drunk. “Go to bed, Starbuck,” he says, walking around to turn off lights before settling himself down on the pull out couch.

“I’m serious.”

“My father made all the choices that led to this.”

“Not all of them.”

In the dark, the silence spreads between them uncomfortably. If she wants to think Zak actually played a part in his own death, fine. But Lee isn’t going to buy it.

“You don’t even know him, Kara. Just go to sleep.”

An old lullaby, something he is sure that he heard in a movie at some point, plays softly in his head. His soulmate thinks of it often as Lee is getting to bed, and he smiles just a little. Even that little reminder of a normal day helps, shows him that his soulmate is going to be okay even if this whole situation is frakked up beyond all recognition.

He wakes in the morning and Kara is gone, and there’s a note on his bag telling him not to wait to say goodbye before he goes back to the Atlantia.

Hell of a way to leave the girl who had nearly been his sister in law, who is undeniably still family to him, but he packs his shit and goes, just like she suggested.

 

* * *

 

 

Lee cherishes the lullabies his soulmate gets stuck in their head, but their schedules are so off balance from one another's that it plays in his head sometimes when he’s in a Viper, or getting drunk, and he wishes it would just stop.

It breaks his heart when he realizes that it’s been weeks since he last heard it. His soulmate still gets music stuck in Lee's head plenty, but it’s angrier tunes or sadder ones.

He sends back that cheery tune that Kara taught him.

He wishes he could do more.

They both lost someone, he decides. It wasn’t just some fluke that they had heard the same sad song, the funeral piece, the same day. Maybe they had even been at the service, that it's some friend of Zak’s that Lee never got around to meeting. Maybe that’s a gift from the Gods, in the worst way. They could have grieved together, leaned on eachother for support.

Instead, Lee had yelled at his old man and then snapped at Kara.

His closest friend on the Atlantia asks him about soulmates one day, nearly a year later, over drinks and Lee shrugs it off. After talking about it with Kara, it doesn’t seem so… important. She thought she had found her soulmate in Zak, and only found out after he had died that it was a lie. And the pair of them had been happy.

What good are soulmates?

His friend looks at him like he’s committed a mortal sin even saying it.

A few nights later, his soulmate gets that same old lullaby stuck in their head and Lee wants to eat his words. That slim comfort that there is someone in the solar system by his side - even when they’re flung gods knows where- is enough to make him thank the gods for this blessing.

He doesn’t vow that he’ll find his soulmate. Many people never do.

But he makes a silent promise to them that he will be there, and he gets that cheery tune stuck in his head to send their way, that melody that Kara always used to sing.


	2. Chapter 2

When the world ends, Kara hears silence.

That’s not the most unusual thing- her soulmate isn’t the most musically inclined, doesn’t get music stuck in his head as often as she does. But frak, it’s quiet for a long time.

Too much is happening in their lives for her to concentrate on possibly losing her soulmate, and she’s sure that people all around her are losing theirs, too. She isn’t special. And she’s not that devastated, either, because as far as she can tell her soulmate is a _dick._

During the funeral, there are so many bodies. So many flags. She hates it, but she wonders if they’re going to collect the flags before they vent the bodies. If they’re going to save the boxes, if they’ll flatten them back up again.

Protocol would say no. But protocol expects that there will be a planet somewhere for resupply, which just… isn’t there anymore. Everything has changed in less than a day and there’s little she can do but hold on for the ride. Get in her Viper and shoot toasters out of the sky.

The priest says the words she has heard too many times and expects to hear too many times after this. Funerals feel less like a sharp reminder of Zak when they’re in the recycled air of the Galactica than when they’re under the clouds, at least.

The recorded music swells as the priest keeps talking. It’s a perfectly decent rendition of the piece, even if it was a faster pace than had been played for Zak.

The priest finishes and they all chant back the words as if in a daze. The old man steps forward and starts talking, but Kara loses the thread of what he says, just yells along with everyone else because she is near tears all of a sudden.

Ringing in her ears is the funeral music.

Her soulmate is alive.

Her soulmate is nearby.

Her soulmate is alive.

So say we all.

 

######

 

She doesn’t know if she can seek out her soulmate at this point. She had nearly hated her soulmate after Zak had died because she expected the music to stop. She had never told him that she thought they were drawn together, that the gods wanted them to be together. He didn’t believe in the gods, never brought up soulmates once.

But she had known.

And on the day of the funeral, she got the funeral music in her head. And then this tune came right back to her, the same bright Libris tune that her father had picked up somewhere, that he had always used to cheer her up.

How dare her soulmate do anything but let her feel sad on the day of her fiancé’s frakking funeral?

Worse yet, she got that same song stuck in her head. She couldn’t even mourn properly with a drinking song rattling around in her brain.

She had concluded then that her soulmate was not worth her time. Wasn’t going to get along with her, anyways. She’d gotten trashed with Lee and then woke up in the dark, still drunk, and got out of the apartment she’d had such happy times in. She didn’t want to face Lee in the morning, not when they’d gotten into a sort-of fight about whether or not it was all the old man’s fault.

She never did have the heart to tell him that she’d been the one to kill Zak, not until the end of the fucking world.

What would she say to her soulmate, if she found him? What would they have that could bind them together besides the end of the world? If that was the only that could make them stay together, was it even worth it?

She knows she isn't the first one to ask. She isn't special. Surely, if she goes to a priest, then she would find the answers in the scrolls, what the gods and the many who had come after to interpret the gods had to say about it all.

She’d ignored what the scrolls had to say about soulmates when she was young. When she met Zak, so sure that she had found her soulmate, she didn’t need to read the scrolls because she’d already hit the jackpot, already had everything she needed. And after… well. She didn’t need to be told how wrong she was.

And now everything is different.

She never trusted oracles and she doesn't delve into the mystic fringes of the religion, but she walks past the oracle’s makeshift setup in a cargo area plenty. She prays for her soulmate’s safety and leaves it at that.

Kara doesn’t need her soulmate any more than she did before, doesn’t seek him out any more than she ever did, but gods, she’s glad that there’s someone listening when plays that lullaby in her head. When it gets sent back to her, somehow on the nights she needs it most, she wants to have more than just phantom melodies to keep her company.

But that would make things harder. That’s true more than ever, now. If she met him and things went bad- and things go bad so often- then she’d rather not lose her soulmate the second time around. And the first time didn’t really count, in a way that will always, always break her heart.

She drags her ass out of her bunk and to the rec room when it gets to be too much, thinking of her soulmate and wanting. She gets drunk with Lee and that quiets the hum in her head.

Ever since the end of the world, her soulmate is chattier, it seems. Has got a tune in his head more often than not. Guess everyone’s got to have a hobby, and his is to keep her entertained, it seems.

She doesn’t mind.

Life falls into a predictable mess of nearly dying, and being more than exhausted after every crisis. Her soulmate always knows. His repertoire expands eventually, a new soothing little tune sent across their bond. She’s touched that he bothered, but she supposes it fits in with her theory that this is his new hobby.

When she’s trapped in the Cylon raider, the music piped into her head is faster than usual, frantic and anxious. She tries to send back that tune he’d learned, that gentle one, to get him to calm down. It doesn’t work, and honestly she doesn’t need the extra stress.

She doesn’t spend more time than that thinking about him. She doesn’t have the time.

Back on Galactica, she sleeps for what feels like forever but still nowhere near long enough. Her time is dotted by visitors, the old man, and Hotdog and Kat, and Sharon, and finally Lee. Her eyes struggle to focus on him, between the meds and emotional exhaustion, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

He sits next to her and puts his feet up on the bed, humming that lullaby.

As the notes filter into her subconscious, she nods off, filing away that information for when she wakes. Not that it’ll make a difference. It’s easier this way, she reminds herself.

 

* * *

 

 

It isn’t until after the raid for Tylium, when she’s on the other side of the fear, that she gives up the mantra that this is easier.

She’s sure what’s sent towards Lee is just as anxious as what he’d sent her on that red moon had been. Just as unhelpful, but frak, she can’t help it.

That night, she invites him to drink, pouring each of them just one shot of her precious liquor.

“To soulmates,” she toasts.

“To soulmates,” he answers, and tips back the drink. 

His lips taste like the whiskey when she leans in for a kiss. 

**Author's Note:**

> Meet cutes are hard and I'm working on it. Slowly.  
> Also let me know your favorite soulmate-y concepts because those are my fucking shit


End file.
